Unveiling value co-creation within the digital servitization business models: Empirical evidence from B2B industrial firms

The paper aims to investigate the value co-creation emergence within business models (BMs) of B2B industrial organizations that have undertaken a digital servitization strategy. A survey is conducted on a sample of 350 Italian industrial firms, whose offering comprises services. Sample companies are grouped by digital servitization BMs, classified in three archetypes (product-, process-, and outcome-oriented). Value co-creation is then assessed for each digital servitization BM by adopting the DARTT (dialogue, access, risk assessment, transparency, and technology) model. The research findings support the close link between value co-creation and digital servitization, also suggesting that the potential for value co-creation increases in moving away from product-oriented digital servitization BMs. Despite value co-creation is encapsulated in all different archetypes of digital servitization BMs, the latter differ in the management of the DARTT dimensions. Finally, the paper proposes a practitioner-oriented tool which supports management to design and redesign the BMs of industrial firms to better respond to the strategic imperative of digital servitization, simultaneously exploiting the value co-creation in B2B setting.